Title: The Said and the Unsaid: Approaches to Narrative Analysis
Abstract: ABSTRACT Creating stories about events and lives is seen as a fundamental human ability, and the key way of constructing lives and selves, of personality and identities. Within health psychology, the focus of narratives is as a way of making sense of illness, of finding order and meaning in lives and selves destabilized by embodied suffering. As this interest in narratives has expanded, so has the variety of approaches to studying them. One concept that has been key in defining and analyzing narratives is that of coherence. The discontinuities and incoherence of narratives, in other words the narratives that do not fit into the expected order can be seen as a way of resisting and destabilizing dominant discourses that can be oppressive. Since the discontinuities in narratives are less often discussed, this paper illustrates one method of narrative analysis, Interpretative Poetics (Rogers et al., 1999), which acknowledges that the narrative is an attempt to create a coherent understanding of events and experiences, but also employs readings, which examine the places where coherence apparently breaks down through silences, gaps and negativity. Following four layers of analysis, this interpretative method unglues multiple voices of the said and the unsaid. As an example of this method, we present an interview with Nadya, in which we study the ways in which she comes to terms with childlessness. Her story contains what can be seen as examples of very subtle, implicit and most likely unconscious resistance to the existing dominant cultural discourses of childlessness. KEYWORDS: Narrative analysis, Interpretative Poetics, childlessness. Pieces and Spaces When starting a collage, each piece of paper is detached and shapeless, its boundaries clearly visible, yet carrying traces of its past history as part of a larger sheet of paper. Hand-made paper is an absolutely central element of these collages - starting out as fibers of dry plants, the process of turning them into pulp that is malleable into paper sheets is deeply embodied. A long, physically intensive period of hammering the fibers into pulp, requiring the full concentration of bodily attention, dissolves boundaries between artist and material, infuses the artist's nonverbal voice into the still shapeless mass and helps her hear the grass fibers. The hand dissolves into the water, the pulp diffuses into the hand and the body knows the texture of the material. Memories of this dance are carried into the future work. I know that after you read me it is hard to reproduce my music by ear, it's not possible to sing it without having it memorized. And how do you memorize a thing that has no story? (Lispector, 1983). The dissected fibers are carried and washed by the water. After achieving the desired consistency, the pulp is poured into the frame that defines its shape. The frame, however, never completely molds the shape of the wet sheet, but preserves the memory of water in what is the most moving characteristic of handmade paper - its rough edges. Having made a sheet, it is rarely used as is, and it is not cut with scissors, but torn. Tearing the sheet transforms it into separate and unique pieces with the shape that each one acquires being beyond the artist's control. The fibers tear in unpredictable ways, and they flow from the edges of the piece. These pieces with their creative and dynamic ragged edges are repositioned in a new context, they are layered next to and over each other and acquire new meaning. So do the cracks between them, where the fibers play. The hand-made paper is combined with other pieces taken from others' work, from photographs, from reproductions - shapelessly torn, or sometimes cut in a rigid form. The work of others finds its place, but as Geertz (1986) points out, It is the copying that originates. Originality hides in the touching and reshaping of each piece to make it part of the new whole. …
Publication Year: 2007
Publication Date: 2007-06-01
Language: en
Type: article
Access and Citation
Cited By Count: 7
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